Latest Peripherals News

Amazon's voice-activated, cloud-enabled speaker and smart-home assistant, Echo, is quite clearly a work in progress. In its current form, it's more of a voice-controlled speaker than a virtual assistant for your home, when it should be the other way round. But this could change very soon as the e-tailing giant is about to kick this ambitious experiment into high gear.

Developed by a Los Angeles-based startup of the same name, Beam is essentially an Android-based LED pico projector that can also serve as a smart LED light bulb. Screw it into an existing E26/E27 light socket or connect it to a power cable, the choice is yours.

You probably don't care that someone is trying to build a better digital photo frame, but your non tech-savvy grandparents might. That's what prompted a startup called Timewyse to come up with Pigeon, a Wi-Fi enabled digital picture frame that stays updated with fresh photos and videos that you and your family upload to the cloud.

For many viewers, the commercials run during the Super Bowl are more fun to watch than the game. So the day after this Sunday's game, Dish Network customers using the company's Hopper DVRs will be able to activate a special Reverse AutoHop feature. You guessed right: It will skip through the entire game to play just the commercials.

Imagine a Surface tablet, exploded into something that dwarfs you as you stand beside it. Add in a pair of cameras, superb digital inking, and collaboration features. That's the Microsoft Surface Hub, which I had the opportunity to demo at Wednesday's Windows 10 event.

Have you ever experienced something that strikes you as extraordinary, but later leaves you unsure of how much of its wonder was real and how much was in your mind? A flash of light in the sky? A ghost? A flaming guitar solo? That's what listening to music on Neil Young's Pono is like.

Harman had a big presence at CES, as it always does considering its portfolio includes AKG, Harman Kardon, Infinity, JBL, and several other well-known brands. Some of the most interesting new products at its booth this year were gesture-controlled headphones, active noise-cancelling earbuds, and an update to its Harman Kardon Wireless HD Audio System.

Audio manufacturer Denon Electronics announced at CES that its new line of HEOS wireless multi-room audio system will soon support Google Cast for Audio, allowing you to "cast" music, podcasts, and Internet radio from an Android smartphone or tablet to any of the wireless products in Denon's HEOS ecosystem.

A vulnerability in Asuswrt, the firmware running on many wireless router models from Asustek Computer, allows attackers to completely compromise the affected devices. Malicious hackers, however, need to launch their attacks from within the local networks served by the vulnerable routers.

You can't swing a burglar's bag of loot at CES without hitting some new smart-home security system. Amidst all the cameras, sensors, and touchscreen control panels, Ekin Labs' exhibit stood out: It's has a software solution, dubbed Hi WiFi, that transforms the hardware you already own into a sophisticated motion sensor array. And it will be free when it emerges from beta--for a limited time, at least.